Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & London Symphony Orchestra - Promises (LP)

Some collaborations feel like marketing exercises. Promises feels like a conversation between kindred spirits. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra meet on a single, continuous piece split into nine movements, released in March 2021 on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop. It’s a quietly staggering record, the sort that sneaks up on you, and it has already settled into the canon as one of the great late works in Sanders’ long story.

The architecture is simple. A soft, cyclical keyboard figure opens Movement 1, a little pattern that repeats throughout like a lighthouse. Sam Shepherd builds a world around it with hushed synths and piano, not flashy, just patient. Then Sanders enters. His tenor tone has aged like good timber, breath and grain up front, and he plays with such care you can almost hear him listening back to the room. There are moments where he sings under his breath and you feel the closeness, the intimacy of a musician who has nothing to prove and everything to express.

The London Symphony Orchestra takes its time, staying out of the way at first, then rising in long arcs that crest in the middle stretch. The strings don’t smother, they shade. Shepherd’s arrangement leaves air between the notes, so the orchestra becomes another current, not a spectacle. It’s a lesson in restraint. The drama comes from dynamics and texture, not volume. Movement 6 is often singled out for the swell of feeling, and it’s easy to hear why, but the record works best as a single inhale and exhale. Flip it on at night and let the motif carry you, the lines of saxophone tracing gentle circles around it while synths glimmer like distant streetlights.

Context matters here. Sanders, who came up with John Coltrane in the 60s and carried the torch for spiritual jazz across decades, didn’t often step into projects with this kind of cross‑genre profile late in life. Promises gave him a wide audience again, and he sounds utterly at home. That was recognised widely too. The Guardian ran a five star review, Pitchfork stamped it Best New Music, and the record turned up on a stack of year‑end lists. It’s rare to see consensus on something so meditative, so slow to reveal itself, but the consensus made sense. The album doesn’t tug at sentimentality, yet it lands as a deeply moving late‑career statement for Sanders, who died in 2022.

For listeners who mostly know Floating Points from club sets and modular workouts, this is not a left turn so much as a refinement. Shepherd is a composer as much as a producer, and you can hear the care in the harmonic voicings, the way tiny changes ripple through the piece. He never crowds Sanders. You get the sense he built the setting, then stepped back, the way a good photographer sets the frame and waits for the right light. The LSO, seasoned in everything from Mahler to film scores, brings poise. No grandstanding, just pure tone and control.

All of which makes Promises a wonderful record to live with on wax. That repeating figure becomes a physical thing when the needle bites the groove, and the quiet passages feel quieter when the room is part of the sound. If you’re browsing for Floating Points vinyl, this is the one that sits next to the turntable rather than back on the shelf. Promises vinyl has been a favourite recommendation in my local, the kind of album a staffer presses into your hands with a knowing nod. It’s also a great gateway for anyone curious about Sanders but unsure where to start. Put this on, then go back to Karma and Journey in Satchidananda, and you can trace a line between eras without feeling like you’re doing homework.

If you collect across genres, it slots neatly with modern classical and ambient as much as jazz. That makes it a handy pick when you want to buy Floating Points records online and you’re weighing up which one will get the most plays at home. Floating Points albums on vinyl come in many moods, but this one feels built for long evenings, a cup of tea cooling on the table, the city outside slowing down. And if you’re digging through vinyl records Australia wide, whether at a Melbourne record store or a sleepy suburban shop, keep an eye out for that muted, abstract cover with the trio’s names. It’s a small promise of calm in a loud world.

Promises doesn’t shout. It trusts the listener. That’s why it keeps giving, long after the last chord fades, long after you lift the needle and sit in the quiet it leaves behind.